‘The Brutalist’ Director Brady Corbet Reacts to the Film’s Use of AI

EXCLUSIVE: Following the announcement that the 3x Golden Globe winning film The Brutalist used AI in post to soften the Hungarian accents of its stars Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones as well as that of its actors, the picture’s director, Brady Corbet, issued a response.

“Adrien and Felicity’s performances are completely their own. They worked for months with dialect coach Tanera Marshall to perfect their accents. The innovative Respececher technology was used only in editing the Hungarian language dialogues, specifically to refine certain vowels and letters to improve accuracy. No English language has been changed. This was a manual process, carried out by our sound team and Respecter in post-production. The goal was to preserve the authenticity of Adrien and Felicity’s performances in another language, not to replace or alter them, and this, with the greatest respect for the profession.

Additional use of generative AI is also used to conjure up a series of finished architectural plans and buildings in the film’s closing sequence, to which Corbet states, “Judy Becker and her team did not use AI to create or restore any of the buildings. All images were hand drawn by artists. To clarify, in the commemorative video shown in the background of one shot, our editorial team created images intentionally designed to look like bad digital renderings from the 1980s.”

“The Brutalist is a film about human complexity, and every aspect of its creation was driven by human effort, creativity and collaboration. We are incredibly proud of our team and what they have accomplished here,” adds Corbet.

Deadline also contacted SAG-AFTRA about the use of AI in The Brutalist, especially since Brody is up for Best Drama Actor at the SAG Awards.

Some sources tell us that the practice of cleaning up audio in post-production is a common practice for all films.

This also raises the aesthetic and ethical question of how this cleaning process The Brutalist is different, if not significantly more serious, from the post-production audio process, for example for Rami Malek’s portrayal of Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsodyor that of Angelina Jolie in that of Netflix Married. This 2018 film won him the Academy Award for Best Actor, and Malek didn’t sing 100% in the film. According to rolling stonethe majority of music Bohemian Rhapsody relied on vocal samples from Queen master tapes or new recordings by Canadian Christian rock singer Marc Martel who sounded like Mercury. Malek’s sung representation of Mercury would be an amalgamation of a few voices. Jolie’s singing performance at Married is a blend of Oscar-winning actress and opera singer Maria Callas.

There are also reports that Netflix’s award-winning title Emilie Pérez also used Respecer technology to improve Karla Sofía Gascón’s singing range. The singing of the actress mingled with that of Emilie Pérez Camille, composer and composer.

We understand that the use of AI on The Brutalist did not eliminate jobs, but rather created them. Corbet is a champion of analog cinema, particularly on The Brutalist, take the photo in VistaVision 35MM format.

The Brutalist was filmed in Hungary. A24 picked up the independently financed drama for less than $10 million after its premiere at the Venice Film Festival. The film was a surprise win at the Golden Globes, winning not only Best Drama Motion Picture, but also Best Actor Drama Feature for Brody and Best Director for Corbet. Corbet is also nominated for Best Director at the DGA Awards, while the film is up for the Daryl F. Zanuck Best Producer Award at the PGAs.

How did all this hubbub go with The Brutalist become ? The picture’s editor-in-chief, Dávid Jancsó, who is also a native Hungarian speaker, revealed in a January 11 interview with online video technology publication RedShark News that the 18-month post-production process included use of Ukrainian speech based on artificial intelligence. Repeaker synthesis software.

At first, the production opted for ADR — with Brody and Jones, as well as other actors — to improve the broadcast’s accuracy, but that process ultimately didn’t work, paving the way for Respeecher, who recorded the actors’ voices to produce a film. AI-generated Hungarian accent. Jancsó added that he integrated his voice into the AI ​​model to better understand the dialect. The editor told RedShark News that Brody and Jones “did a fabulous job” with the pronunciation of the “difficult” and “extremely unique” language, and that the goal was perfection, “so that even locals will not notice any difference. Brody was specifically chosen by Corbet for the lead role since he is of Hungarian descent (his mother having come to the United States as a refugee from Hungary).

“Most of their Hungarian dialogues contain a part of me speaking,” the editor-in-chief told the outlet. “We were very careful to maintain their performance. It’s mostly just replacing letters here and there. You can do this yourself in ProTools, but we had so much dialogue in Hungarian that we really had to speed up the process, otherwise we would still be in post.

“It’s controversial in the industry to talk about AI, but it shouldn’t be,” Jancsó said. “We should have a very open discussion about the tools that AI can give us. There is nothing in the film using AI that hasn’t been done before. It just makes the process much faster. We use AI to create these little details that we didn’t have the money or time to film.

The Brutalist follows Hungarian-Jewish architect László Tóth (Brody), who emigrates to the United States after surviving the Holocaust, as he seeks to rebuild his life, career, and marriage. Once settled in an unknown Pennsylvania and awaiting the arrival of his wife Erzsébet (Jones), the visionary is spotted by a rich industrialist (Guy Pearce). The sprawling tale — also co-written by Mona Fastvold, Corbet’s wife and actress/filmmaker — spans 215 minutes and three decades of postwar America, with a 15-minute intermission.